In other words, Japanese journalism tends to emphasize political agenda-setting over objective reporting of facts, and it has been pointed out that this is due to problems in education and training.
relevance
- Audrey Tang: Open up agenda-setting authority to people
- Che Guevara: Truth is the best policy in the long run.
mizloq I have colored the responses of journalists in the main countries (the percentage of journalists who answered “extremely important” or “very importance”) in the main countries and colored them side by side. Each of you has your own country, but even so, some of the oddities of Japanese journalism stand out.
mizloq: “How important is ‘telling it like it is’ in your job? On a scale of 1 to 5, how important is it?” to the question “What is the best way to do it? 「extremely important」「very important」 Percentage of journalists who answered “yes
U.S. 98.3 France 96.5 United Kingdom 93.0
Japan 65.1 Journalists in Japan (PDF)
mizloq “Tell the facts as they are” is not at the top of the list only in Japan (including China and Russia) among these countries. The rate of respondents who consider “setting the political agenda” an important job for journalism is unusually prominent. Low rates of importance in “being an objective observer” and “allowing people to express their opinions.”
- Related: Audrey Tang: Open up agenda-setting authority to people.
mizloq One of the reasons behind all this may be that Japanese “journalists” are not professionally trained beforehand. Percentage who majored in journalism and/or communication in college (from the same survey)
- U.S. 80.1
- United Kingdom 44.1
- France 79.2
- Germany 35.1
- Japan 12.5 and quite low
mizloq Maybe they were thrown into the field without learning the history, raison d’etre, mission, and dangers of journalism, and as they worked under the direction of their seniors and desks, they developed a belief that “our job is to set the policy agenda,” or “we’re not here to set the agenda. Perhaps, as they worked under the direction of their seniors and desks, they developed a belief that “our job is to set policy agendas”. The report also states that “OJT has only recently been established in Japanese media companies” Journalists in Japan (PDF).
mizloq “So why don’t we just focus on education in universities from now on?” but that’s no longer possible. Those majors have long since occupied faculty positions with people who’ve been beaten out of the “field” and left with false beliefs and ideologically biased disciples.
mizloq Data source is from The Worlds of Journalism Study https://worldsofjournalism.org Country reports - WJS2 (2012-2016). The questions may differ slightly from year to year, but I have not seen any significant impact. worldsofjournalism.org Country Reports - Worlds of Journalism Study
mizloq I’d like to add this just in case some people misread it as “the other 35% think it’s okay to lie”. The choices are extremely important very important somewhat important little importance unimportant 5, and the table shows the ratio of the top two. Others are not answering that telling the facts as they are is “unimportant” or “unnecessary.”
mizloq However, if you’ve studied journalism properly (whether in school or on-the-job). “The primary mission of journalism is to tell the facts as they are.” and there is no one who hasn’t been tapped, so 65.1% is a number sufficient to be dismayed.
mizloq because it “I’ve never been taught about building or even as a philosophy.” or “I’ve been taught, but I’ve learned that there are more important things than that in the field work. Because the numbers indicate that
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